The scene has played out in the Boston Red Sox clubhouse | Forum

BOSTON Time and again, the scene has played out in the Boston Red Sox
clubhouse, Clay Buchholz facing the music after another outing marred by
early turbulence, trying to explain to dozens of reporters what went
wrong out there.

Of Buchholz s eight starts so far this season, Saturday was already
the fifth time he has surrendered five earned runs. In the second
inning, his pitches were all over the strike zone, and he ended up
paying dearly after Houston s George Springer turned on a waist high Junichi Tazawa Jersey,
90 mph cutter and cranked it off the ThinkEnergy billboard high above
the Monster seats in left center field for his second grand slam of the
season, which gave the Astros a 5 2 lead.

It was mostly smooth sailing the rest of the way after Buchholz got
past that, totaling five strikeouts over the third through sixth
innings. After inducing only three swinging strikes in the first two
innings, Buchholz hunkered down and got nearly a dozen over his final
four.

Buchholz worked in his changeup artfully in the third, ringing up
Marwin Gonzalez and Luis Valbuena on back to back at bats with changeups
away and diving out of the zone. Then, to finish it off, he served up
an 80 mph change to Preston Tucker to induce a fly out.

Buchholz worked some more craft in the fifth with two more
strikeouts, catching Carlos Correa looking at a fastball down and in,
then whiffing Gonzalez on a low and away changeup a second time.

I thought he had better stuff today than his last time out, said Red Sox manager John Farrell Koji Uehara Jersey,
alluding to Monday s 14 7 win over Oakland. I thought he was more
powerful and crisp, and settled in after the second inning. He was able
to give us the six innings and stabilize the game.

After confirming in his postgame news conference that Buchholz would
be making his next scheduled start, Farrell was twice asked what he
thought was contributing to the early inning struggles of his nominal
No. 2 starter. While pointing out the quality in his May 4 start against
Chicago which involved his first win and his season bests for
strikeouts six and earned runs two Farrell put it in layman s terms.

It s not by lack of effort on his part, lack of work in between
starts, Farrell said. To simplify it, it s about being a little more in
command in the count.